Sweden 'spied on Russian leaders for US'

Swedish signals intelligence agency FRA spied on Russian leaders and shared the data collected with the US, local media report citing Edward Snowden leaks. Sweden’s ‘cable access’ made its position ‘unique’ in the eyes of the NSA.

The NSA eyes the FRA as a ‘leading partner’ among the US agencies
foreign partners in the global data collection program,
reported Sweden’s Sveriges Television (SVT) citing documents
provided by the fugitive whistleblower through US journalist
Glenn Greenwald.

Ahead of a meeting with officials from FRA, NSA bosses were
instructed to praise the Scandinavian partners, another said.

“Thank Sweden for its continued work on the Russian target,
and underscore the primary role that FRA plays as a leading
partner to work the Russian Target, including Russian leadership,
… and … counterintelligence," SVT cited it as saying.

“FRA’s cable access has resulted in unique SIGINT reporting
on all of these areas,” it continues, using an abbreviation
for signals intelligence.

The SVT report didn’t name any particular individuals and
organizations in Russia, which were the subjects of FRA interest.
It did not detail the exact methods, which the intelligence
agency used to collect information, although the mentioning of
cable may refer to internet traffic.

In 2011, the WikiLeaks website revealed
US diplomatic cables, which said that FRA was able to monitor
some 80 percent of Russia’s internet traffic, which passed
through Sweden, and that the country had adopted a new
wiretapping law to allow such actions due to Washington pressure.

Nils Hanson, chief editor of the swedish TV program ‘Mission:
Investigate’ which helped break the latest Snowden leaks, told RT
that while allegations of collaboration between the FRA and US
intelligence were nothing new, “now we can show documents
proving this relationship between Swedish authorities and the
Americans.”

Currently the FRA is authorized to monitor cable-bound
communications to track "external threats" against Sweden.
Permits are authorized by a secret court, the Defense
Intelligence Court.